


Nobody Puts Baby in a Corner

by bookishandbossy



Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV)
Genre: 1960's AU, Alternate Universe - Historical, Developing Relationship, F/M, Forbidden Love, Happy Ending, Some Fluff
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-02-20
Updated: 2016-04-07
Packaged: 2018-05-22 06:57:14
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 11,590
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6069604
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bookishandbossy/pseuds/bookishandbossy
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It's 1963.  Kennedy is in the White House, the Beatles are making their mark on the stages of Liverpool, and Jemma Simmons is stuck within the four walls of a country club. However, when she meets Leo Fitz, a boy with a mind just as brilliant as his smile who works at her family's country club, she begins to think that, just maybe, her world can still expand.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Brown Eyed Girl

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Lavendergaia](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lavendergaia/gifts).



> Written for lavendergaia as part of the Fitzsimmons Network's Secret Valentine exchange!
> 
> Title from Dirty Dancing, because why not?

It was May of 1963, the first month of a long hot summer, and much to her dismay, Jemma Simmons had found herself in America. She'd graduated from Cambridge with top marks less than two weeks ago but the years she'd spent there already seemed to have acquired the sepia tone of a distant memory: the hours in Professor Weaver's lab, the nights spent giggling over tea and biscuits with the girls who lived down the hall, the long walks through Cambridge's streets as she endlessly debated scientific theory with her classmates. When she tried to remember the particular sharp chemical smell of her corner of the lab or the taste of the day-old crumpets she used to toast over her fire, she couldn't quite summon it up and when she tried to imagine her future, it seemed equally vague. Because, when it came right down to it, she had a degree but nothing to do with it.

All the scientific laboratories she'd applied to had turned her down with a series of increasingly flimsy excuses. They didn't have space, her research interests didn't fall within their specialties, her talents would be wasted with them...all of it was a carefully worded way of saying that she was too young and too ambitious and most of all, too _female,_. So instead she'd gone to visit her family in the Hamptons and discovered that they'd become prominent members of a country club. Not just an ordinary country club, with golf courses, deliberately bland food, and a dress code composed largely of floral dresses and salmon pink polos. This was the kind of country club where political deals were discreetly completed over shrimp cocktail and chicken à la king and where the women wore “casual” pearl necklaces for each tennis match. Wealth reeked from every carpeted corner and perfectly manicured stretch of grass, and Jemma's mother and her younger siblings seemed to be addicted to the smell of it.

They went to the club almost every day, whether it was to meet one of her mother's friends for lunch, to take her younger brother Michael to his tennis lesson, or to bring her younger sister Kathleen to the endless rehearsals for the club's annual end-of-summer revue. And Jemma, without anything to occupy her days, was inevitably dragged along to round after round of lunches, swimming sessions, and straitlaced social events.

“You know, this club even rejected the Starks,” her mother told her at lunch, glancing proudly around the club restaurant. “We were quite lucky your father was able to pull some strings and get us a spot.”

“This club rejected the Starks because they're Jewish,” Jemma said flatly. She would have paid the club dues twice over for the chance to meet the brilliant inventor Howard Stark or his equally brilliant son Anthony. 

“Don't be vulgar, Jemma.” Her mother pursed her lips in disapproval and stirred her iced tea with a straw. “They simply wouldn't have felt comfortable here.”

“Because everyone here looks exactly the same,” Jemma muttered and shoved a forkful of Waldorf salad in her mouth before her mother could glare at her again.

“Oh, there's Lucille!” Her mother waved at a perfectly coiffed blonde woman on the other side of the room. “Her son just got back from Harvard a few days and we thought that since you're new to the city, he could show you around. He's a very nice young man, studying to be a doctor so you'll have plenty to talk about.”

“I'm not that kind of a doctor.”

“It's not like you're doing anything with your days, darling.” Her mother shrugged elegantly, patting her lipsticked mouth with a heavy cloth napkin. “I just thought it might be nice for you to meet someone. Maybe he could even escort you to the party at the end of the summer: according to Lucille, he's not spoken for yet.”

“I don't want a tour guide or a society escort,” Jemma said through gritted teeth.

“It's not a question of what you want, though. It's a question of what you need.” A husband, her mother meant. Jemma clutched the napkin in her lap so tightly that it nearly ripped in half and thought longingly of the copy of The Feminine Mystique she'd hidden at the bottom of her bag. There had to be more to life than marriage and children and all the housework that accompanied both of those things, more than lunch at the club and PTA meetings and backyard barbecues, more than the life her family had adopted wholeheartedly the moment they'd moved to America back when she'd been in primary school. She had no intention of becoming like the women in Mrs. Friedan's book, the ones trapped inside their own lives without the words to call for help. Jemma Simmons could forge her own path in America, no matter what everyone else intended for her.

Two days later, however, Jemma found herself wedged into a horse-drawn carriage in Central Park while being regaled with stories of Grant Ward's (uncomfortably detailed) experiences with dissections at medical school, races with the rowing team, and arguments with his older brother. The most interesting thing about him was the fact that she could probably grate cheese on his cheekbones and Jemma spent a not entirely unpleasant half hour hypothesizing about the different types of cheese that could be grated in that fashion. At the very least, even the cheapest kind of cheese would have the welcome side effect of making him stop talking.

“And then I rowed even harder for the last thirty feet with this forward arm movement,” he said, gesturing vigorously around the carriage and nearly hitting her in the face. “There were two boats ahead of us, coxed eights doing sweep-oar rowing. The boat from Yale had a great coxswain but ours was even louder so we--”

“Congratulations,” Jemma interrupted. “It sounds like it was quite the victory.”

“I knew you'd appreciate that story. You seem like you have your head on straight, Jemma. My parents would say that your family was the right kind of people,” Grant said with a nod. “We're all having dinner at the club tonight, you know.”

“No, I actually didn't.” Once again, her mother had made plans for her without asking her opinion. When she got home, there'd probably be an outfit laid out for her on her bed, meant to complement whatever tie Grant chose. 

“I'd thought that maybe we could stay in the city for a little longer. I've heard wonderful things about the Village,” Jemma said and tried to turn her grimace into a smile. Grant Ward may have been awful company but at least he was awful company in New York City.

“Trust me, girls like you don't go there. You'll like dinner at the club much better.” Grant leaned over to pat her hand and she inched away as politely as possible and resisted the urge to swat his hand away.

As it turned out, she didn't like dinner at the club better. The food was over-sauced and under-season, the dress her mother had selected was uncomfortably tight at the waist, and the conversation revolved around the topics of golf, the weather, and the awful state of politics nowadays. Midway through a conversation about whether or not the pope had any influence over President Kennedy, Jemma discreetly pushed her chair back and stood up as slowly as she could. She was about one more sentence away from burying her head in her hands and screaming and if she could just spend a minute or two away from the table, if she could just have some space that wasn't filled with other people's thoughts, if those other thoughts weren't quite so _loud_ all the time...then maybe she could get through the rest of this dinner.

She was three feet away from the table when the stiff taffeta in her skirt rustled, her mother looked up, and inside her head, Jemma unleashed a long string of curses that her parents would have been horrified to ever hear out loud.

“Jemma, dear, where are you going?” her mother asked sharply. 

“I'm feeling a little queasy so I thought I'd go to the ladies room for a minute,” she said and tried very hard to look green. “I think it might have been the prawns. They had a bit of a—”

“Let's not go into detail, shall we?” her mother said with a grimace. Jemma fled as quickly as she could. Her time at the club had been mostly spent inside the restaurant but she reasoned that if she kept on going, she'd be bound to get outside eventually. _Think rationally, Jemma._ Her pulse was hammering in her ears as she spun in a circle, trying to decide which door could get her out, and she curled her hands into balls at her side to keep them from tapping anxiously against her dress. If she could just get out of the club for a minute, she'd feel better. She knew it. There had to be a sign pointing to an exit somewhere, if only for emergency purposes. Unless neon didn't go with their decorating scheme. 

Carpeted hallway hung with Norman Rockwell paintings followed carpeted hallway hung with Norman Rockwell paintings and Jemma could have sworn that she'd seen that ugly vase before. Then she pushed open a door and found another set of stairs. Victory. That had to be the club employees' entrance, if only for the fluorescent lights in the stairwell and lack of carpet on the stairs. Jemma clattered down the stairs, not caring how much noise her heels made, and pushed open the heavy door at their base. 

The door opened out onto the lush green of the club's golf course, now completely deserted and lit only by a few spotlights, and for the first time Jemma felt able to breathe, in the dark and the quiet and the wide open space. 

“What the hell are you doing out here?”

“I...well, what are you doing out here?” Jemma sputtered and turned to face the unknown voice from where it had issued in the darkness, hands on her hips.

“I work here. I'm on my smoke break.” The unknown voice was definitely male, rough and Scottish. “Not that I smoke—I just wanted an excuse to get away from all those idiots in there. Tonight, one guy told me that the lettuce wasn't arranged right on his plate. Prick. Anyway, I'm allowed to be out here and I don't think you are.”

“Well, I wanted to get away from them too,” Jemma said sharply. “It's a big golf course. You pick your part and I'll pick mine.”

“So you work here too? New hire?” He took a step forward, the lamplight glancing over his face, and she caught a glimpse of curly hair and intensely blue eyes.

“No,” Jemma sighed. “I...well, I guess technically I'm one of those idiots in there. My family joined the club a few months ago and now they spend all their time here. Dinners, cocktail parties, tennis matches...I've got the route we drive to the club memorized now.”

“That explains the cupcake dress then,” he muttered. 

“Cupcake dress?”

“All that taffeta. It sort of makes you look like one of the pink cupcakes they serve for dessert, all fluffy and—Look, you make a very nice cupcake,” he blurted out. “Just forget that I said anything. Sorry.”

“It does look a little like a cupcake,” Jemma admitted and poked the taffeta experimentally with one finger. It bounced right back. “You don't have to apologize. That was the closest anyone's come to making me laugh here.”

“I've, er, I've got more bad jokes if you want to hear them. Like why should you never trust an atom? Because they make up everything.” When she laughed, he turned and looked at her with wide eyes. “You didn't have to laugh at that. I know it was pretty bad.”

“But it was sincerely bad. Most of the people I know would never admit it if they told a bad joke.” On an impulse, she stuck her hand out towards him. “I'm Jemma.”

“Fitz.” And when he came fully into the light to take it, Jemma found herself suddenly, unexpectedly breathless. He wasn't as conventionally handsome as some of the other men she'd admired, but there was something about the way the angles of his face fit together, about the smile that seemed to be lurking at the leftmost corner of his mouth and the different shades of blue she could count in his eyes that made her want to look and look again.

And standing there, underneath the lights and inside the quiet, occasionally shooting a smile at Fitz when she thought he couldn't see it, Jemma felt her breathing calm and the knots in her neck relax. For the first time since she'd first been forced into going to the club, she didn't completely hate it there. It was easy to talk to Fitz, as they slowly traded complaints about the club members and theories about how the geography of the golf course could be improved to make it impossible to get a hole in one (Fitz) and to create shelters for the small animals that usually got driven off the course (her). Whenever she'd talked to boys at Cambridge, she'd felt unbearably awkward, aware of every last jerky hand movement and misplaced joke, convinced that she was saying or wearing or doing the wrong thing. If the conversation ever switched to science, she was perfectly at home but somehow, no matter how many papers she published or experiments she performed, no boy ever thought to ask her what she'd like to talk about.

With Fitz, though, something was different. Maybe it was the dark of the summer night, which meant that they only saw each other in bits and pieces. Maybe it was the fact that he didn't seem to expect anything from her besides the occasional piece of conversation. Or maybe it was just his habit of saying precisely what he meant. But, whatever it was, Jemma felt wonderfully...free. 

“I suppose they'll be looking for me by now,” she finally said with a sigh. “It's been nearly a half hour. But it was—it was very nice to meet you, Fitz.”

“It was nice to meet you too, Jemma. I, ah, I work here most days. Doing repairs. Just in case you spot anything in need of fixing,” he added quickly. 

“I'll let you know.” She couldn't help glancing back over her shoulder as she pushed open the door to the stairs and there he was, beaming down at the ground when he thought she wasn't looking anymore. Jemma wasn't exactly sure why, but she found herself beaming too. And when her mother asked her a series of pointed questions about what exactly she had been doing for so long in the ladies' restroom, she shut her eyes, remembered the way he'd smiled, and didn't even care. 

The next time she went to the club, it was a sunny Thursday afternoon and she'd been invited to an afternoon tea masquerading as a Social Committee meeting and gossip session. The cucumber sandwiches were soggy, the tea lukewarm, the rumors vicious and, much to Jemma's delight, two chairs at the table were spectacularly wobbly. 

“We'll have to get some replacements,” her mother's friend Mrs. Frost said, frowning down at the chairs. “We can't expect the Social Committee to properly concentrate on seating charts if they're wobbling back and forth and trying to keep their balance.”

“I can go and find someone,” Jemma volunteered, trying to keep her voice as neutral as possible. “I don't know nearly enough yet to be a help with seating arrangements but I'm sure I can find some kind of maintenance help.”

“That's sweet of you. Go on.” Mrs. Frost dismissed her with a little wave of her hand, the same one Jemma had seen her use on her pack of Jack Russell terriers. If it meant Jemma could miss some of the meeting, she didn't mind at all. Now she just had to determine which part of the building Fitz was most likely to be found in. In proper scientific fashion, she started by inspecting the maintenance office but all she found there was a scruffy-looking British man who appeared to be busy occupying himself throwing darts at a picture of the manager of the club and swigging from a suspiciously strong smelling mug of tea. Then, she proceeded to various locations where things were likely to be broken: the stage for the band and its assorted microphones, the foyer with its elaborate chandelier and thirty-eight bulbs that were all equally likely to burn out, the shed where they kept the golf carts that broke down on the course at least once a month, and even the swimming pool. (Perhaps he did something with the chemical levels on the side?)

When she finally found him, however, he was on the other side of a frosted-glass door and when he emerged, he had a dark-haired girl wrapped around him, hand twined through his and head tilted against his shoulder. “We really appreciate it, Mr. Sitwell!” he called back over his shoulder. “I'll get right to work on the balcony.”

“We've...we've got some wobbly chairs,” Jemma blurted out in a strange high-pitched voice that didn't sound quite like her own. “So if you don't mind--”

She trailed off, hands twisting in the fabric of her full skirt, and tried to collect her thoughts as Fitz tried to face her. Here were the facts. One: the dark-haired girl currently attached to Fitz's side was absolutely stunning, all big dark eyes and an even bigger smile. Two: that was quite nice for Fitz and as a new friend of his, she should probably congratulate him on his good fortune. (Part of friendship was learning all kinds of new things about friends, after all.) Three: there was absolutely no reason for her voice to ascend to a pitch capable of breaking glass and for her stomach to twist painfully. Four: there were some wobbly chairs that really did need to get fixed.

“Jemma!” he said, coming forward to greet her with another wide smile. Fitz probably smiled that way at everyone, she thought bitterly. “Did you have something you needed help with?”

“Yes. I, that is to say my mother has a tea here this afternoon and some of the chairs are wobbling quite dangerously. So I thought we might require your assistance,” she said stiffly. 

“Of course. Now tell me, what kind of a wobble was it? Sideways, forwards, both ways at once? Perhaps the occasional dramatic moment of both legs leaving the ground completely?” Fitz said and looked quite pleased with himself. Jemma couldn't quite bring herself to laugh.

“See, I told you that one wasn't funny,” the dark-haired girl said and came forward from the circle of Fitz's arm to extend a hand to Jemma. “I'm Daisy. I sing at the club most nights.”

“Jemma. My parents are members here so I get dragged along most days. I met Fitz the other night and he told me to come find him if anything needed fixing.” It had been a friendly gesture from a friendly boy with a beautiful smile. And she, despite her genius IQ and all her degrees, had clearly taken it as something it wasn't. She'd put two and two together and come up with five. It was silly to be so upset over something like this, she told herself. There hadn't even been anything to be upset over. 

“He's very helpful, our Fitz. Sometimes when he shouldn't be,” Daisy said with a fond smile. “He tried to smuggle a puppy into the club once when I was having a bad day.”

“I got told that it lowered the tone of the club. Got a good chewing-out from Sitwell too.” Fitz shrugged and stretched out the muscles of one hand. “Right then. Lead the way to these wobbly chairs and I'll see what I can do.”

He rolled up the sleeves of his flannel shirt when he went to work on the chairs and Jemma told the traitorous feelings in her stomach to cease and desist. They ignored her.

 

Leo Fitz had known Daisy Johnson for almost five years, when she was serving cocktails at a seedy bar in the Village and he'd been called in to keep the place from being declared unfit for human habitation. Back then, she'd refused to tell him her real name for three whole weeks and made him call her Skye or Mary Sue, depending on the day. She'd only gotten more stubborn from there.

They were driving home from the club when she leaned over and whacked him on the arm. Hard. “What was that for?” he sputtered, attempting to massage his injured arm with one hand and steer with the other. “You nearly ran us off the road!”

“Because you're an idiot, that's why,” Daisy said and leaned back in her seat with a satisfied look on her face.

“I mean, I know I'm an idiot regularly.” Fitz sighed. “But tell me why I'm an idiot today?”

“Because you just made that girl think that we're together. I saw the way you looked at her, Fitz,” Daisy said the moment he opened his mouth to speak again. “Like a labrador puppy with a brand new treat dangling right in front of its nose.”

“As far as anyone at the club knows, we are together. We both decided that that would be best,” Fitz said firmly and decided to ignore the puppy comparison. If anything, he was a fully grown border collie. A very dignified one. “I just...I promised that I would help you. Any way I could.”

“Times are changing. Maybe soon you won't have to help me anymore. Not that I'm not grateful, because you know I am. I made you that ambrosia salad and everything,” Daisy added and laughed when Fitz grimaced. Even his roommate Mack, who'd let Daisy sleep on their couch for a whole two weeks and claimed that she reminded him of his little sister, had refused to eat it. “But I...I can't help hoping that there's somewhere I can just be. Awful ambrosia salad and all.”

“There will be. For both of us,” Fitz said quietly. “Just not right now.”

They drove in silence for the next ten minutes until Fitz pulled up in front of her building and as Daisy swung the door of the car open, she twisted back around to face him, face unusually serious. “Just think about telling her the truth, Fitz. That's all.”

“I...I just can't,” Fitz whispered after she had left, leaning forward and resting his head against the wheel. “I'm afraid of what might happen if I do.”

He wasn't just afraid of what might happen to him and Daisy, the endless warnings against getting involved in any way with a member of the club, the careful plans they'd constructed that could come crashing down if someone pushed a little too hard. What really made him shiver was the fact that he couldn't stop the thirty minutes he'd spent with her from running through his head on an endless loop and the something he'd seen spark in Jemma Simmons' eyes last night. She was steel and starlight and Fitz had always had a weak spot for the skies.


	2. You Can't Hurry Love

“Jane, I feel like such an idiot,” Jemma groaned, stirring her drink so aggressively that it nearly slopped over the sides of its glass. “I actually thought that there was something there. I wasn't exactly sure what kind of something but there was this sense of possibility and I...I actually couldn't wait to see him the next day. And then of course I saw him with _her_. It shouldn't be possible for someone with two PhDs to be so stupid, Jane, should it?”

“You're not an idiot. People are a lot harder to read than lab results,” Jane said soothingly. Jemma had first met Jane Foster at a conference where, as the only two women presenting, they'd been relegated to the secondary stage and slots in the early hours of the morning. They'd attended each other's lectures anyway. 

“And men are hardest to read of all,” Jane added. “If I was a biologist or an anthropologist, I'd do some kind of study about men's mating behavior. I could compare all kinds of variables, look at different ways of dressing, physicality, displays of suitableness as a partner like lifting heavy objects--”

“It wasn't mating behavior,” Jemma interjected. Jane had a dangerous glint in her eye again, the kind that suggested she was one drink away from ringing up some of the country's most prominent anthropologists and pitching her idea to them, and someone had to stop her before she got distracted from the work on the Einstein-Rosen bridge she was getting paid ridiculous amounts of money to do. Jemma still wasn't exactly sure who Jane's employer _was_ , but they were shockingly generous.

“Everything's mating behavior. Hitting Thor with my car was mating behavior,” Jane said and smiled fondly. Thor was her massive Norwegian boyfriend, a mountain of a man with the habit of calling everyone Lady something-or-other, banging his mug on the table to request another drink, and repeatedly telling a long and slightly horrifying story about his younger brother and a goat. Jemma quite liked him, but she suspected that he may have participated in some of Professor Leary's experiments over at Harvard.

“The second time too? Maybe I could hit Fitz with a golf cart?” Jemma mused and blinked down at her glass. Somehow it was already half empty. “Gently, of course. Very gently.”

“Let's get you another drink,” Darcy, Jane's lab assistant, said. “And forget about hitting anyone with anything. The only reason Thor didn't go and raise a stink at the Norwegian Embassy after Jane hit him was because he thought she was 'far out'.” 

Jemma wasn't exactly sure what Darcy assisted Jane with but she had been the one to find the tiny club in the East Village where they were currently crammed around a table, the one to drag Jane out of the lab on time, and, most importantly, the only one who could decipher the drinks menu in this dim lighting.

“But I haven't even finished my first one,” Jemma said slowly, blinking at her. 

“Exactly,” Darcy said and flagged down the waiter.

Jemma was three drinks in when she spotted a strangely familiar face standing by the bar. Short dark hair, bright eyes, unfairly pretty face...the room had already started to take on that strange glow it always had when she drank, but she could have sworn that it was Daisy, the singer from the country club and Fitz's girlfriend. She was dressed differently, wearing a brightly patterned sleeveless sheath instead of the full-skirted aqua blue confections the club forced all its singers to wear, but there was something else different about her too, something that made Jemma squint through the dark of the club and wonder if it really was the same girl she'd met a few days ago. When Jemma had met Daisy, the other girl had been all smiles and jokes. (Not that Jemma liked thinking about exactly how she'd met her.) Still, her smile had been a little too wide, her shoulders a little too straight and while they'd been talking, she'd glanced around the hall once or twice, as if to see who else might be listening.

Now, though...Daisy seemed to be glowing. She was talking to someone who was just out of Jemma's range of vision, laughing and grinning broadly. Then Daisy pulled whoever she was talking to forward into the light and kissed them. Jemma's jaw actually dropped open.

Daisy was kissing a woman. A very tall, very pretty blonde woman who was kissing her back avidly. 

It wasn't as if Jemma had never seen anything of the like before. Two of her friends at Cambridge, Laurel and Nyssa, had shared a flat and firmly declared themselves to be spinsters at the ripe old ages of twenty-five and twenty-six. Sometimes, when they thought no one else was looking, Laurel would stretch up to press a quick kiss to Nyssa's mouth in the safety of their flat or Nyssa would slip her arm through Laurel's during a country stroll. Jemma had bought them a full set of china when they moved into their flat and meant it as a wedding present. She'd just never...would she have to tell Fitz?

She wasn't in any kind of position to tell Fitz, she told herself firmly. They were acquaintances of less than an hour, barely even friends. Daisy could tell him on her own time, if and when she chose to. Or perhaps Fitz already knew. Perhaps it was one of those sex things she'd read about in underground magazines. (She certainly hoped not.) She would mind her own business and never think about what she'd seen ever again. Except she had a sinking feeling that she'd think about it every time she as much as glimpsed Fitz around a corner. And then what was she supposed to say? She was a terrible liar and with her luck, she'd end up spewing it all out in some incomprehensible rush of words and promptly fleeing through the nearest exit.

The solution presented itself to her in a flash of inspiration and alcohol. She could simply ask Daisy. Walk right over and say it flat out. So before she can think better of it, she pushed herself to her feet, ignoring Jane and Darcy's questions, and strode across the room to Daisy. 

“Jemma!” Daisy's eyes went wide as she spun around to face Jemma.

“Does Fitz know that you're in love with someone else?” she blurted out. She hadn't even formed the hypothesis until she said it but the moment that she saw the blond woman slip a protective arm around Daisy's waist and Daisy grab her hand tightly in response, she knew that it was true.

“Yes, actually. He—he does. But you can't tell anyone that I told you,” Daisy added urgently. “I could lose my job at the club if anyone knew.”

“I won't, I swear. I just...I just want to understand.” All she'd ever wanted was to understand. “Why do you and Fitz...”

“He wanted to protect me and I let him. Being different in someplace like the Hamptons...it doesn't end well. You really can't tell anyone,” Daisy said again. “Please, Jemma.”

“I won't.”

“You don't want to find out what'll happen if you do,” the blonde woman added and narrowed her eyes at Jemma.

“Right.” Jemma gulped and took another swallow of her drink to avoid having to say anything else. Daisy and the blonde were both staring at her now, so she took that as her cue to exit. Quickly.

Jemma's mind was still reeling when she went to bed, two drinks and one ill-conceived dance break orchestrated by Darcy later, but it was even worse when she woke up in the morning. First of all, she had a pounding headache building in her temples and a pit of nausea in the place of her stomach. Second of all, her mind had had the chance while she slept to properly register everything that had gone on the night before. Fitz and Daisy...well, they weren't. And third and worst of all, that meant that maybe she and Fitz had a chance to _be_.

It was a ridiculous way to feel, really. But Jemma hadn't felt anything like this in ages. (Maybe ever.) She wasn't even sure that she had words for it, any kind of certainty to ground whatever bubbled in her chest whenever she thought about Fitz. It was an idea more than anything else, a possibility floating in the back (and occasionally the front) of her mind. And it wasn't that she was a stranger to possibility—her mind could produce half a dozen scientific possibilities on any given day. But the possible had never sent this kind of heat through her veins and made her swim before and most of all, it had never felt so very close to probable.

So the day after, when her mother summoned her to the country club yet again, she broke something within ten minutes by accidentally-on-purpose dropping something into the pool. “I'll call maintenance,” she volunteered and did her best to look innocent.

“You might as well,” her mother said and heaved a huge sigh. “I'm not sure if it'll even be salvageable but at least you had the good sense to ruin one of the mediocre pieces of art.”

Jemma couldn't help wondering who had had the brilliant idea to hang paintings by a pool. And when Fitz arrived, tool kit at his side and sleeves rolled up to his elbows, he wondered the exact same time. “I don't know much about paintings, ma'am,” he said slowly after he'd fished the painting out of the pool. “But I think that it might not be the best idea to keep them near water.”

“We're trying to enrich the lives of our members,” one of her mother's friends said, lip curling upwards ever so slightly. “Have you ever been to the museums in New York, Leopold? It's the same idea as those.”

“I have,” Fitz said and bent down to inspect the painting, stopping all further conversation. As the ladies drifted away to take up their positions around a patio table and order their iced teas, he muttered something that sounded suspiciously like “Rockwell's no Van Gogh, though.”

“No, he's not. It's a quite hideous painting, really,” Jemma said quietly and took a step closer to him. “And not even an original—the odds are rather good on it being a fake.”

“Oh, it's definitely a fake. I'm not going to tell them, though.” Fitz grinned up at her, then ducked his head back down to poke at the painting some more. “Might be entertaining to watch them get all worked up about it.”

“How do you know that it's a fake?” she asked.

“I did some reading on art forgery. Growing up, I spent a lot of time at the library. It was free and the women who worked there liked me. They gave me shortbread on weekends sometimes and they'd order in books if they didn't have one on a particular topic,” Fitz said.

“Let me guess—dinosaurs?”

“More like advanced aerodynamics, but yeah.”

And then they were off. Fitz was an engineer, it turned out, or would be one if he ever got the proper training. But he was brilliant anyway as his eyes lit up with idea after idea and his hands sketched out designs on the concrete by the pool, conjuring up new devices with just the sweep of his pointer finger. He wanted to hear her ideas too, all the things that she'd only mentioned in passing at Cambridge, where she was too afraid of a sharp dismissal to flesh them out fully. And somehow, she didn't even mind when he criticized them one minute because he had ideas on how to improve them the next.

It was unfair, really. Brilliant _and_ handsome. What was she supposed to do in the face of that? 

Later that night, Fitz let himself into his tiny fifth-floor walk-up, threw himself onto the Murphy bed, and sighed deeply. Why did she have to be beautiful and smart? One girl wasn't supposed to combine so many perfect things at once. It just shouldn't have been allowed.

“If you keep on sighing like that, the bed'll snap you back into the wall,” Mack said from where he was stirring something on the stove. It smelled vaguely like beans, all they'd been able to afford for the past week.

“I'd let it,” Fitz mumbled, face still buried into the mattress.

“Sitwell being a jackass again? I can ask if there's an opening coming up at the garage again.” Mack had worked at the country club for a total of two days before he'd quit in disgust. Fitz wished he had that kind of courage.

“No, not that. There's a girl,” Fitz said and flopped over to stare up at their ceiling. That crack looked like an elephant now—they should probably do something about it before the ceiling caved in completely. “She's just...she's something amazing.”

“Right.”

“And her parents are members at the club,” Fitz added. And if he got caught doing anything more than talking to her, he'd be out of a job before he could blink twice. 

“Well, shit.”


	3. The Times They Are A'Changin

“I broke something again,” Jemma announced to the world at large. The world took little notice of her. 

“Well, was it valuable?” her mother asked, peering over the top of her magazine at Jemma from her lounge chair. “As long as it wasn't an original anything, no one will mind. They've got vases in storage to replace ones broken by the men when they overindulge.”

“I can't imagine that it was,” Jemma said and shrugged. It had been a perfectly ugly vase, spattered with a pattern of lime green and fuchsia ducks and selected precisely for its hideousness. She'd reasoned that no one would miss it and after she'd sent another Rockwell tumbling straight into the path of a golf cart, it had seemed like a good idea to choose something less well liked. 

“You've been awfully clumsy lately. I think we may have made a mistake not sending you to finishing school after all,” her mother declared and raised both impeccably plucked eyebrows at her.

“Finishing school? Sounds positively Victorian.” Jemma shuddered and turned to go, smoothing down the front of her linen sundress. “Well, I'll just pop off and get it fixed, shall I? I'm sure it'll be glued back together and horrifying everyone in no time.”  
As soon as she was out of sight of the ladies lounging around the pool, Jemma practically sprinted down the hallway towards the maintenance office. If she'd had to listen to one more minute of discussion about the latest fashions (but nothing too fashion-forward), how really scandalous the way that Elvis Presley moved his hips was, or the probability of a war with the Soviets and whether or not they'd be able to have TV dinners in the bomb shelters...well, Jemma would probably have screamed loudly enough to break all the crystal goblets the women were sipping spiked iced tea out of. Over the past two weeks, her family had summoned her to event after event at the club. Tennis lessons, garden teas, evening dances, golf tournaments...her presence was required at anything where there was the possibility of introducing her to the son of one of her mother's friends. 

Some days, after yet another disastrous introduction or man who tried to lecture her on things she knew more about than he did, she couldn't help wondering what her parents saw when they looked at her. Did they really think she was that desperately in need of a man? Or did they just refuse to see her as anything else? She had a mind and a degree she'd gotten with that mind and a million things she could do besides settle down in a subdivision and raise three children. (Admittedly, knowing her mother, it would probably be a very tasteful subdivision.) The other day, she'd mentioned applying for President Kennedy's new Peace Corps, just to see how shocked everyone would be. Very had been her answer. She'd thought of really doing it too.

“What do you think?” she'd asked Fitz, perched on a table near his workstation and frowning down at the latest design he'd handed to her. “Should I go off to Africa and try to spread science wherever I go?”

“You'd be brilliant at it, but I—it wouldn't be awful staying here either. I'd miss you if you left. We've got drones to finish designing, after all,” he'd added quickly and blushed. Jemma had felt a marvelous sensation spread down to the tips of her toes. It wasn't much, just the sort of thing one friend might say to another, but she'd take what she could get.

And it wasn't that she didn't want to be friends. A few weeks in, Fitz was proving to be one of the most interesting people she'd ever met: clever and funny and able to follow her wherever she went, whatever ideas she chased around corners and down rabbit holes. The only other person who'd ever come close to doing that was Jane and even she tended to get a bit of a glazed look on her face when Jemma went into the intricacies of molecular structure. Just having Fitz around, being able to talk to him about anything and everything, snatching whatever scraps of time she could to run ideas past him at the speed of light, should have been enough. But instead there was a fierce longing that welled up inside her whenever he leaned in close to point out a new design feature or laughed at one of her jokes. Jemma knew what want felt like, the heat and the rush and the haze that descended over her, but this was something entirely different. Something, she suspected, that might have been need.

“Jemma!” Fitz looked up from his desk, beaming at her, and for a moment, she could have sworn that she was breathless. He looked perfectly ordinary, sleeves rolled up and grease stain on the back of one hand, and yet some part of her found it all quite extraordinary. “What did you break this time?” he asked.

“Just a vase.” She made her way over to her customary perch and sat beside him, drawing her skirts around her. “Nothing too valuable. Let me see what you've been working on?”

“Won't you get in trouble if you keep on breaking things?” he asked, frowning down at the piece of disassembled gadget he was holding. “I don't want anything to happen to you because of me.”  
“I'll be perfectly fine. My parents give the club too much money for them to do anything to me,” Jemma said blithely and leaned over his shoulder to peer down at the gadget too.

“Right.” He didn't say anything more and that was when Jemma realized her mistake.

“I didn't mean...that is—I don't want you to get in trouble either,” she blurted out. “I'm sorry. I know that it'd be a great deal harder on you than it would be on me and I didn't mean to imply, I just...I'll break fewer things if you want. Try to be a little more discreet. I—I forget sometimes.”

“It's all right. I forget sometimes too.” Fitz said quietly and turned around in his seat to look at her. Really look, like he wanted to figure out exactly how she worked, like he'd never get tired of asking questions about her, like he saw her and not all the ideas other people built up around her. It made Jemma want to do ridiculously foolish things like kiss him right there on the spot.

“How's Daisy?” she blurted out. She still hadn't told Fitz that she knew the truth about his relationship with Daisy. He'd tell her in his own time, if he ever did. It was safer this way too. Easier not to pretend that the million other things that stood in their way didn't matter, easier to imagine that they would be doomed before they even started.

“Daisy's great. She's got an audition today, actually. For a show in the city,” Fitz said proudly. “She's hoping to be able to quit her job at the club soon, once she's got a role in New York.”

“And what are you going to do if she gets it? Go to New York along with her?” Jemma asked, trying to keep her voice light. Surely they wouldn't have to keep up the ruse if Daisy left the club. Maybe Fitz would find a job in the city and maybe she could meet him there, maybe they could wander through the Egyptian section at the Met and eat lunch at tiny French cafes. Maybe they could have a friendship, or even something more, that existed outside the confines of the tiny office where Fitz worked. But that, Jemma realized with a sinking feeling, would require her to have a life in the city too and she hadn't heard back from any of the dozens of labs she'd applied to. American labs seemed to be just as reluctant as British ones to employ a woman, especially one whose family had appeared in the society pages. Each rejection letter she'd received seemed to be stuck forty, if not a hundred, years in the past. 

“I, er, I don't know. The future—it's never been a very certain thing for me,” Fitz admitted. “I always wanted to go to university for engineering and for a while my mum thought I might be able to, off the child support from my dad. Only he stopped paying it and disappeared when I was ten. Mum thinks he's holed up on some Pacific island, sipping pina coladas on the bloody beach, and I wouldn't put it past by the bastard.”

“I'm sorry.” Jemma rested a hand on his shoulder and moved a little closer to him. “You could still go to school, you know. You're much smarter than most of the people I went to Cambridge with.”

“And what would I do at Cambridge? People like me don't get to go to places like that,” Fitz muttered. 

“Well, maybe soon they will,” Jemma said stubbornly, crossing her arms against her chest and pulling back to give him her best know-it-all look. “One of my classmates was the son of a grocer and another was the daughter of a butcher.”

“Really? You know,” Fitz said quietly. “When you say things, you have a way of making me believe in them.”

Jemma wanted to tell him that he made her believe too. But it wasn't the time or the place or any of the things that would have made them finally fit together, and so instead she leaned back over and asked him another question about the new modifications he'd made to their drone design. 

 

“Pepper was thinking that you could take a tour of the labs after lunch,” Jane said casually. Too casually. She was staring down at her gnocchi with far much concentration than pasta had ever required. 

“Pepper, as in Pepper Potts? Tony Stark's right hand woman Pepper Potts?” Jemma dropped her fork to hit the plate with a resounding clang. “Jane, are you working for Stark Industries?”

“Not exactly. I'm working for an initiative of Tony Stark's. A select organization, I guess you could call it,” Jane said and stuffed enough food into her mouth to make her cheeks bulge out like a chipmunk's. She'd never been much good at secrecy.

“Jane,” Jemma hissed. “Are you working for a spy agency? Has the CIA recruited you for something to do with the space program?”

“Don't call it a spy agency,” Jane said, still staring down at her plate. “Pepper'll explain it all after lunch. And, Jemma...” She looked up then and her smile was positively dazzling. “I really think you're going to like it.”

She did. The labs that Pepper Potts led them through were state-of-the-art, shining and new and filled with technologies that she'd only read about in scientific journals and people whose names she recognized from their bylines. There was Jane's lab, of course, stuffed with telescopes, folders of data, and stashes of snacks that were Darcy's job to maintain. But there was also Doctor Hank Pym, and his famous miniaturization technology working alongside Doctor Bruce Banner, who'd been rumored to be conducting some groundbreaking radiation experiments and Hank McCoy, the renowned biologist. Out of the corner of her eye, Jemma could have sworn that she even spotted the elusive Sue Storm and Reed Richards. And perhaps best of all, everyone seemed to want to meet her. Pepper told her all about their biochemistry department, Dr. Banner peppered her with complicated questions and seemed remarkably pleased when she answered them correctly, a dark-haired woman named Maria insisted on setting up plans for coffee, and Doctor McCoy even asked her to take a look at one of his samples underneath the microscope. 

When Dr. Banner mentioned that he'd read her PhD paper, she had to keep herself from throwing her arms around him in delight. (It was probably better to refrain from hugging the notoriously temperamental scientist.) Here was an entire building of people interested in what she thought and if she could only bring Fitz and her favorite tea kettle along with her, Jemma thought that she would be perfectly content to spend the rest of her life here. 

“Dr. Simmons,” Pepper said at the end of her tour. “How good are you at keeping secrets?”

“I—I'm willing to learn. _Very_ willing to learn,” Jemma said quickly and laced her hands in front of her, willing herself to keep from fidgeting.

“You might have guessed that what we're doing here isn't exactly something that we'd like to be made public. Our founder, Agent Peggy Carter, wanted to create an organization capable of protecting the world from all the things it doesn't want to know about. At the moment, we're operating under the aegis of Stark Industries but Commander Fury has high hopes for an independent organization soon. He and Tony don't always see eye-to-eye,” Pepper added with a wry grin. “But we need brilliant minds to help us do all of this and we'd like you to be one of them.”

“You're offering me a job?” Jemma breathed. When Pepper nodded, she turned to Jane. “They're really offering me a job?”

“Of course they are. There's no one better for it,” Jane said warmly. “I recommended you months ago but they had to do all kinds of ridiculous background checks first.”

“Ridiculous and necessary. You know, making sure the bad guys aren't still lurking around. Remember the other intern who tried to steal all your research?” Darcy put in with an eye roll. She'd appeared somewhere along the way, as she tended to do where Jane was concerned. “I had to hit him over the head with a very expensive piece of equipment.”

“Either way, the job's yours if you want it,” Pepper interrupted smoothly. “We'd love to have you here.”

“I'd...I do want it. Very, very much. So thank you. Thank you so much,” Jemma repeated. “For taking a chance on me.”

“I'd hardly call it a chance. The good luck is all ours, for seeing someone that everyone else overlooked. Welcome to SHIELD, Dr. Simmons.” Pepper shook Jemma's hand solemnly, Jane and Darcy swooped in to hug her immediately afterward, and all Jemma could think was that first of all, she'd never felt so dizzy with happiness. And second of all, she had to tell Fitz right away.

 

It was night at the club and Jemma had crept out of the main dining room and down to the golf course very carefully. Her mother had been shooting her suspicious looks all night and she'd had to go into an impressive coughing fit when it came time for the stuffed lobster in order to be excused. “Fitz,” she hissed, peering into the door of his office. “Fitz, where are you?”

“He's down at the golf course taking his break,” a voice said from down the hallway and when Jemma turned, she recognized Daisy, laced into a ridiculous puffy blue confection but smiling all the same.

“Daisy! How are you?”

“Better than ever, actually. I got a real job in the city, a part in a show that's going to Broadway this fall. Some Dickens adaptation that was a big hit in London, with corsets and petticoats and lots of starving orphans.” Daisy frowned, presumably at the thought of said corsets and petticoats, but then brightened again. “But it's a show. A real show and I'm looking forward to never having to sing 'Yes, We Have No Bananas' ever again.”

“That's wonderful. Congratulations,” Jemma said and found that she really meant it. She hadn't spent much time with the other girl, besides Daisy's semi-regular appearances in Fitz's office, but seeing the way that a smile transformed Daisy's face, she couldn't help wishing that maybe she'd gotten to know her better. “I've got a job in the city too. Maybe we could get lunch sometime?” she offered.

“Yeah, I'd really like that. Finally have the chance to find out if all the stories Fitz tells about you are true,” Daisy said with a laugh. “He's down the stairs and to your left. Probably out by the third hole on the course.”

He was, as it turned out, sprawled out on the grass and staring up at the sky, one hand tracing the shapes of the constellations. He'd been just as fascinated with the stars as a child as she had.

“Fitz!” Jemma called. She'd already kicked off her heels to make better ground on the course and she sprinted down the hill towards him, dress billowing out behind her. “Fitz, you'll never guess what happened today?”

“Someone finally landed a man on the moon?” Fitz turned over, propping himself up on his elbows to look at her as she sat next to him in a billow of skirts.

“Better than that. Well, not for the scientific community at large. Perhaps for the scientific community at large? That sounds a bit egotistical of me but--” Jemma paused and drew in a breath. “I got a job. A real job, at a real lab, the same one where Jane works. And they want me to be there and said they'd been following my work for ages and I just...I'm so happy, Fitz.”

“That's amazing. You—you're just brilliant, Jemma and you deserve every bit of it,” Fitz said and pushed himself up to face her properly, grabbing both of her hands in his. “You'll do such amazing things. Not to mention, the maintenance department will be overjoyed to hear that you won't be breaking things anymore.”

“Not breaking things anymore?”

“I mean, you'll be in the city, at your lab. You won't really be around much anymore. Who'll smash all the ugly vases for me?” Fitz teased.

“Oh no, I—I couldn't leave you for good. I could never do that,” Jemma admitted. “You, er, you've become quite important to me really. I think you might be battling it out with Jane for the title of best friend and you might be, um, even a bit more than--”

Fitz kissed her. And if earlier, she'd been dizzy with happiness when Pepper offered her a job, now she was positively delirious with it. Fitz's mouth against hers, one hand cupping her face and the other still holding hers tight, the way he nipped lightly at her lower lip and then swept his tongue into her mouth when she gasped. It was like all the gears in her head lurched to a halt and all that was left was Fitz. Fitz, and the starry-eyed way he looked at her when they finally broke the kiss. 

“I probably shouldn't have done that, should I?” Fitz whispered. “But somehow I can't bring myself to care.”

“You know,” she said quietly, leaning in closer to him. “I can't either.”

Jemma kissed him again.

 

“I'm an idiot,” Fitz announced when he got back to his apartment later that night, flopping backwards on his couch and grinning up at the ceiling. “But I'm probably the happiest idiot in the world.”

In his corner of the apartment, Mack just sighed. 

 

The next morning, however, when Sitwell called Fitz into his office, he had the sinking feeling that pretty soon he'd be the world's saddest idiot. “Leopold,” Sitwell said and smiled smugly when Fitz winced at the name. “Leopold, you know how much we value your work here. You practically keep the place running on your own and no one else is quite as good at unclogging the pool.”

“Thank you?” Fitz said hesitantly. 

“You're one of our best employees, in fact. Which is why,” Sitwell continued. “I know that it couldn't possibly have been you the security guards spotted on the golf course last night with the daughter of one of our most notable club members. I know that it couldn't have been you because you know very well that being involved with any of the club members is strictly forbidden and grounds for immediate dismissal. And I know that it couldn't have been you, Leopold, because I know how very much you need this job. So I told the security guard that he must have been mistaken and that it wouldn't happen again. Now tell me, am I right?”

“You're right,” Fitz choked out. “Completely right.”

He walked away from Sitwell's office with the sinking knowledge that he should have known better. After all, he'd known that she was too good for him the first moment he'd seen her, brilliant and lovely and probably likely to accomplish more in a few months at her new lab than he ever would. Girls like her, girls who had the world in the palm of her hand and didn't even know it, didn't end up with boys who'd never even managed to make it to university. Last night, underneath the stars and with Jemma's news, it had seemed like anything could happen for them. But now, he realized that it was more likely that nothing would ever happen for them. Jemma would go off to her lab, he would stay here, and whatever they could have been would stay a memory, a story for her to pull out at parties, a possibility that flew past them too fast for them to catch it.

Daisy came skidding around a corner, eyes wide when she caught sight of him. “I heard that you got called into Sitwell's office. Fitz, what happened?”

“It's fine. Someone saw me and Jemma, that's all. I'm fine. It, ah...it never would've lasted anyway,” Fitz said.

“Never would've lasted?” Daisy demanded. “She was crazy about you and you were just as crazy about her. You can't let the club's stupid rules stop you.”

“I can if it means my job.”

“Oh, Fitz.” Daisy's face fell and she reached out to pull him into a hug. “It'll all be okay. We'll—we'll get you another job! Bobbi knows people in the city and I'm sure she could find something for someone as good as you are. We'll figure it out, I promise.”

Fitz didn't say anything, because he knew better than to get in Daisy's way when she had that determined look on her face. But deep down, despite the sinking feeling in his stomach, he couldn't help hoping that she was right. She'd always been able to find her way out of anything, whether it had been the orphanage she'd grown up in or the bad ex-boyfriend who'd tried following her to New York, and maybe she'd teach him the same skill at escapes.

 

The same morning, Jemma felt (rather ridiculously) like a princess in one of those animated films she'd watched as a child. Snow White perhaps, like she could twirl around surrounded by small birds. She didn't even voice her customary complaint when her mother informed her that they were going to the club for Kathleen's rehearsals. (The dread end-of-summer revue, where her sister was apparently going to perform as a talking bird, was drawing ever nearer.) She made her excuses as quickly as she could and then sprinted down the hallway towards Fitz's office.

“It's Jemma!” she announced brightly, rapping her knuckles against the frame of the door.

“Miss Simmons.” Fitz kept his head down and his eyes fixed firmly on his work. Maybe one of his supervisors was lurking in the corner? Jemma looked around and didn't see anyone.

“Mr. Fitz,” she said and leaned against the door, willing him to look up. 

“Is there anything I can help you with today?” Fitz asked stiffly.

“I don't think so. I mean, I haven't managed to break anything yet today.” She laughed, a little too high and a little too bright. “Fitz...is everything all right?”

“It's just fine. Now if you'll excuse me, I have some work that I should be getting done.” Fitz finally met her eyes then and silently mouthed the words I'm sorry. Something about the twist of his mouth and the slump of his shoulders as he turned away from her made her heart constrict, pulsing sharply in her chest as if to warn her that something had gone very wrong. 

Jemma backed into the corridor, letting the door shut behind her with a loud creak. She'd gotten him in trouble somehow, she realized. Or she'd just done something horribly wrong and Fitz had realized that he didn't want anything to do with her. Maybe she'd said too much or asked too much or—no. Fitz liked her no matter what silly things she said. He'd told her so last night. And besides, he'd said sillier things himself. It couldn't...he couldn't have changed his mind. She refused to believe it.

Someone must have seen them on the course and Fitz—Fitz had probably been threatened with losing his job. And it was all her fault. Somehow that was even worse. She'd never really thought much about the consequences for him, had she? She'd known that getting caught, even before they'd kissed, would mean much worse for him than for her but she'd never really realized how bad that worse would be. She'd get a severe talking-to from her mother and Fitz would have to start looking for a new job. The guilt swelled up in her throat, nearly choking her. It had all been her fault. Hers, and no one else's. And worst of all, there was nothing she could do to fix it.

She felt like a spoiled little girl and as she felt the tears began to spill over, she wanted nothing more than to go home, curl up in a ball in the middle of her bed, and sob. But she wasn't a little girl anymore and she couldn't help feeling that if she fled home, she'd be letting the club get the better of her. All their rules, delivered in clipped tones from people looking down their noses at anyone who hadn't had the good fortune to be born rich, wouldn't count for much in the years to come. She just knew it. And if it didn't come true right now, if change stuttered and stalled along on its way, she'd just have to help it along.

Jemma could feel something new creeping in at the edges of her. Maybe it had arrived in these last few days, building with every step she took into the SHIELD labs and every time she kissed Fitz. Or maybe it had been there all along, and she just hadn't been ready to see it. But either way, soon, she'd kiss whoever she wanted to kiss. No matter what anyone else said about it.

 

“I came over as soon as I heard. Moo shu pork?” Daisy asked and held a container of Chinese food out towards him. “Bobbi thought that you could use something to eat that wasn't composed solely of beans.”

“Mack told you, didn't you?” Fitz glared over at his roommate, who just shrugged and held both palms up to ward off any more attacks. “Traitor.”

“I could find you a job at the detective agency I work at,” Bobbi put in from where she was sitting by Daisy on the couch, leaning casually against the other woman's side. “We've been looking for a decent wiretap guy after Melinda scared off the last one.”

“No, I've still got my job. I just...there was a moment, when I thought that I was going to get fired, that I was almost relieved. Then I remembered how many times the electric company's threatened to turn off our power,” Fitz said with a grimace. “But still—I can't work at the country club forever. I don't want to work at the country club forever.”

“Then what do you want?” Daisy said and leaned forward just a little. She and Mack had been teaming up to hound him about finding another job lately and there was a spark in her eyes at the idea of Fitz leaving the club too.

“I want to go to university. Get a proper degree and then get a proper job.” Fitz shrugged, trying to sound casual and disguise the fact that his heart was rattling out of control like a runaway freight train. He'd said the words a million times over, inside his head and to other people, but they'd never felt quite real until now. When he'd come home from work, he'd marched in to the local public library and asked the tweed-wearing woman sitting behind the desk exactly how you applied to college. At first, she'd blinked at him in confusion but when he'd started explaining his situation, she'd come alive and started making lists of schools for him to request information from. (She'd seemed quite excited to do something that didn't involve finding board books and today's copy of the newspaper.) After all, if Jemma Simmons believed in him, maybe he could too.

Daisy hugged him so hard that the Chinese food nearly went flying everywhere.

Three weeks later, Fitz boarded a train to Boston, dressed in a barely-worn suit that had previously been used as evidence in one of Bobbi's cases, marched into a Cambridge office, and did his best to convince the MIT Dean of Admissions and a battalion of professors that he was a proper genius. From the way the professors' jaws dropped when Fitz began scribbling equations across the blackboard, he thought that he might have a fighting chance.

He didn't see Jemma again until nearly the end of August, at the end-of-summer club dance. It was his last week of work and Sitwell seemed determined to wring every last bit of expertise out of him. Privately, Fitz hoped that the club's complicated electrical system would fall to pieces without him. He wouldn't even have been at the dance at all if it hadn't been for the fact that the paper lanterns strung outdoors seemed in danger of going out at any moment. Sitwell had forced him to stay with the promise of overtime and so now there he was, attempting to move discreetly among the guests and prevent either a total lack of lighting or a small fire. Most people didn't even look his way as he navigated through the crowd, rendered invisible by his flannel shirt and tool-box at his side, until he reached up to adjust one of the lanterns and felt a pair of eyes boring into his back. 

When he turned around, there she was. Jemma, wearing some floaty blue dress that made her look impossibly, unfairly lovely. “Fitz,” she said, smile spreading across her face. “Fitz, come dance with me. Just once.”

“I—I don't think I'd be allowed. Aren't you worried about what everyone would say?”

“Not in the least. Are you worried about what people would say?” Jemma asked and tilted her chin stubbornly upward.

“God, no.” Because there were a lot of things he couldn't give her, at least not right now, but he could do this. “I'll probably step on your toes, just so you know.”

“Well, then, I'll step right back,” Jemma said and extended her hand to him. 

People stared and whispered, of course, as Jemma swayed in his arms. It didn't matter. Neither of them were very good dancers. That didn't matter either. What mattered was that he got to memorize the way that she felt in his arms, the way it might feel to be with her for real. And for now, that would be enough. 

 

Three years later, Jane marched into Jemma's lab when she was in the midst of working with some very delicate samples, despite Jemma's very explicit instructions not to be disturbed when she was working with any kind of alien material. Jemma glanced up to scold her, stopped, looked, and looked again.

“Pepper finally found you a suitable engineer,” Jane announced.

“I...I see that.” Jemma carefully set down her sample slide, took off her lab goggles, and turned away from her lab bench to look at her suitable engineer head on. He looked just the same and yet somehow completely different, in his neatly tailored button-down shirt and trousers and with his blue eyes burning a hole right through her. 

“Hello Dr. Simmons. I'm Leo Fitz,” he said, a smile slowly spreading across his face.

“Hi Fitz.” She crossed the room to take his hand and felt the same electricity she'd felt three years ago surge into her when she shook it. “Call me Jemma.”


End file.
